THE DAY THAT NEVER SHOULD HAVE COME
She wished so badly that she was somewhere else. Anywhere else but at the Arlington National Cemetery, at her friend's funeral.
Dr. Temperance Brennan was standing at the grave site, the cold November wind blowing her shoulder-length light brown hair, her blue eyes bluer than ever. Her husband and partner, FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth was standing right next to her, his dark brown eyes fixed on her face in a concerned gaze, and he was squeezing her hand once in a while to let her know that he was and always will be there for her. Christine, almost ten years old now, was standing behind her parents, tears rolling down her cheeks. She quickly wiped them away as in the cold November wind they felt like ice cubes.
It had been the hardest week of their lives. Hardest week? Scratch that. Hardest 8 years of their lives. Christine could not understand most of what really was going on, given that she was too young, but one thing she did understand. She will not be able to see him anymore, to play with him anymore, to have a good talk about anthropology with him.
It was gnawing away at all of them. Brennan looked up from the coffin for a moment to see Jack Hodgins, Angela Montenegro and Cam Saroyan standing on the other side of the grave. Angela was crying, and she seemed inconsolable. The squinterns were standing right behind them.
But Temperance Brennan was standing next to the grave with a serious face and dried line of tears on her face.
"I have to stay strong!" she has told herself that morning as she was getting dressed. She knew that this day would come. She was more afraid of this single day than anything else for quite a while now. Tears gathered in her eyes again, threatening to fall, her lips slightly trembled. Like at the moment when you don't allow yourself to cry, but the tears are still there. Then it was time for Booth's speech; that was his last wish, to have one of his best friend's speak. He stood before the coffin and began his speech he had written over the past week. He wrote speeches before, even one for one of his old military buddies' funeral, but this? This was the hardest one. It took him almost 3 days, more than a couple of drinks and at times Brennan's help to finish it.
"It was a great privilege for me, and I think for all of us, to have known him. I can remember meeting him for the first time; I think it was about 14 years ago. Our first case together was when we found the body parts floating in a pool of purple water. I did not know much about the guy back then, but as we got to know him, he turned out to be a brilliant guy, a total genius." Booth took a big breath and let it out with a sigh, then continued reading while fighting back the tears.
"Wendell never asked for much from life. He was a happy and contented man, he was not in any way materialistic, he didn't aspire to possess things; he got his most pleasure from anthropology and working in the lab with his best friends… Another of Wendell's favorite pastimes was hockey; he continued playing hockey until his illness allowed. Then he took off all the possible days from work and he travelled to South America, the Galapagos, the Adriatic and all the places he had always wanted to see." Booth took another deep breath, the tears really threatening to fall. He was not sure he could continue. But he had to. He had to do it for him; he made Booth promise that he would do the speech. And Booth still had a couple of paragraphs left on his paper – so he continued.
"Wendell's illness forced him to leave work earlier this year, and his plans for retirement that he had worked so hard all his life for, were not to be realized. It seems so unfair that a healthy, active and young man as Wendell was, should be a victim of this horrible illness. First he found it very difficult to accept his illness, but after I talked to him - oh God I still remember that talk, word for word - he actually decided to fight it. And so he fought, for straight 8 years. Whenever you asked, he would always say, I'm fine thanks or I'm okay, thanks, I can do that. He fought till the very last minute and was taken away from us too early." He wished they were somewhere else, he wished it so badly, but to no avail. "I always told Bones, that 'There is more than one kind of family!' and I still think that is true. Wendell was part of our family. A special part that will forever be missed." Booth looked up from his paper. There were so many faces he did not recognize in the crowd. Brennan told him that morning that she and Angela sent out quite a few invitations to the neighborhood that helped Wendell out when he was going to school and he knew a lot of people at the Jeffersonian too. He looked back into his paper and with a deep sigh he started reading the last paragraph.
"When someone is taken from us, as Wendell was, in the prime of their life, understandably we are not as comfortable with words and phrases that point towards a celebration of their life. Immense anger, deep hurt, inconsolable grief, rage, disbelief, these are just a few of the words and feelings that are associated with thoughts of his death. But hidden in all the pain and sorrow that we feel. There is undeniably something to celebrate as Bones reminded me a few days after Wendell's passing. We can celebrate the fact that we have known Wendell, though he is no longer with us, we can celebrate that we were privileged and honored to have known him. That he was a part of our lives. So we meet here today to honor and pay tribute to Wendell and to express our love and admiration for him, and in doing so I hope that we can bring some form of comfort to everyone who is here, and who has been deeply hurt by his untimely death. The catastrophe of death cannot be altered, but it can be transformed by love. So think of Wendell as the young and brilliant scientist guy who was not willing to go down without a fight. Remember him that way. Rest in Peace, Wendell Bray." Booth put away his paper into the pocket he could find first and placed the white rose that he was holding so far onto Wendell's coffin, then as everyone else followed to do so, he walked back next to Christine and Brennan.
Brennan was letting her tears fall openly now, she didn't mind it anymore, and Booth just squeezed her hand to reassure her that he was right there. But at that moment all Temperance Brennan could see, was the black coffin covered in white roses, being lowered into the ground, and all she could feel was her pounding heart in her chest that had been broken into a million of pieces -even if that was scientifically not possible- the day she received the news of Wendell's passing. She had thought she was ready for it, she had thought that the wall she have had built for that case was going to be enough. But it was not, it was not even close to enough.